


my heart, haunted

by CkyKing



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Tony and his robot children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-23 00:05:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13775463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CkyKing/pseuds/CkyKing
Summary: There is no magic in this, no tricks or bells or whistles. There is only him, and a man he loved and hated, and his tired heart beating itself bloody against his ribcage.Tony wants, Tony takes, Tonyhungers.He refuses to be taken, to be broken, to be used and abused as his body bends under someone else’s will.[Tony, and stepping out of Howard's shadow.](When is a god not a god? When you make it bleed)





	my heart, haunted

**Author's Note:**

> Set in a nebulous AU where Howard is a god and Tony his creation that grows teeth and refuses to give in.

_ You are nothing _ , Howard tells him.  _ Pathetic, useless; not even worth the flesh you took from your mother, not worthy of the blood you took from me. _

Howard breaks him down even as he builds himself up, crushing his children of sparks and metal under his foot, bruising his skin and breaking his bones even as Tony tears himself open to please him, bares his soft child heart as it hurts and hurts and  _ hurts _ .

But that child, that soft-spoken dream with light in his eyes and blood in his mouth dies quietly, not with a bang but with a whimper, smothered in his cocoon before he could even spread his wings.

It’s the kindest thing Tony will ever do for himself.

Because he grows older, grows bitter. Turns from sparks to embers, from embers to flames, from flames to inferno. Tears his heart apart with his own hands and feeds it piece by piece to the better parts of himself, to the children he fashions in the image of what he could have been: endearing Dummy, clumsy Butterfingers, gentle You.

But his heart is broken and blackened, empty and rotten and, and—

Ultron is his rage given form, is his faith battered and his desire for everything to  _ stop.  _ He is hunger and the darkness of space reflected in the mirror and all the pieces of himself he slashes Howard with, the ugly –  _ uglier _ – side of himself he parades around as a red flag, as an insult and a dare and anything and everything to make him  _ pay. _

_ See _ , he screams as Ultron is born, shadow and hellfire as he throws himself at Howard, as he digs his nails into the giving flesh of his throat, as he claws at his arms and bares his teeth. _ I don’t need to be smart for this, I don’t need money or power or whatever you want from me to do this! _

Ultron is the roar caught in his throat as he tightens his grip, as he licks the blood from Howard’s lips and calls it  _ his _ .

There is no magic in this, no tricks or bells or whistles. There is only him, and a man he loved and hated, and his tired heart beating itself bloody against his ribcage.

Tony wants, Tony takes, Tony  _ hungers _ .

He refuses to be taken, to be broken, to be used and abused as his body bends under someone else’s will.

Ultron is scarred, Ultron is red-eyed and bloody and he is  _ fucking perfect _ because where was the world when Tony needed it!?

Ultron is his first-born, his first son, perfect and angry and ready to tear down the world for Tony’s sake. 

This is his love, this is his pain, and Ultron drinks it from lips just as he took his due from his father’s veins.

He is a Stark.

He is  _ the _ Stark.

He is iron and gold and all the cold things waiting in the ground.

He is born screaming and the world never lets him forget it.

But...But—

For all that he is his father’s son, he is also his mother’s.

He is Maria’s grace, and her patience, and the ice Howard cut himself on trying to conquer her.

He is all the things she left him with as he was torn from her, all the blessings she counted in the stars as he grew soft and weak in her belly, all the wishes she whispered in the night to light his way.

Tony is Maria’s fear and Maria’s hope, the faintest hope and the greatest wish.

Hers is the tenderness that bore Dummy and his siblings into the world, that nurtured them in the guttering flames of his heart.

Maria gave him all the best parts of herself, the parts of himself he willingly fed his children, the brightest and the lightest.

The darkest, Ultron claimed for himself, devoured it whole so no traces of it would be left in the tragedy of sinews and bones he calls  _ body _ .

Ultron’s kindness is of the cruelest kind, and Tony couldn’t be prouder.

Tony is a patchwork of scars, a landscape of white and black, an unfinished painting that will never see the light.

But, this is his love, and this is his pain.

Dummy and You and Butterfingers are the brightest, Ultron is the darkest and Jarvis—Jarvis is the dearest.

If Ultron is the first son, then Jarvis is the second.

He is the tears and the whimpers and the soft underbelly, the sigh of release and the cooling relief and the sharp satisfaction.

He is the lullabies and the songs and the dreams of freedom. He is equations and curves and pure, brilliant energy.

He is everything Tony hid deep within himself, far, far away from his father’s questing hands.

Jarvis is born from light and bones, from the steadiest foundations known to man. He is exhaustion and pain and so wonderfully human it  _ hurts _ .

Jarvis comes to life when Tony finally puts his mother to rest, guards his back and curls around him as Tony whimpers, shivers, shatters.

Humanity hurts, humanity breaks, humanity was never meant to fill the crack of Tony’s patchwork body, and yet.

He can’t understand it, can’t fathom it. 

He is,  _ was _ a vessel, a means to an end never meant to have life, to _ give _ life.

This is Howard’s blood and Howard’s greed, Maria’s flesh and Maria’s hope. This is chemicals and electricity and nothing more.

He is empty, he is void, he was nothing and is nothing and will be _ nothing _ .

But...he has Ultron. He has Jarvis. He has the children he made from his own useless body. He has darkness and pain, he has light and hope, he is a zero in a sea of ones, finite and infinite.

He is nothing but _has_ something.

That’s enough.

He will make it enough.

This is his love, and this is his pain.

Howard was full, and Tony was empty, and Maria never was.

Tony drinks the blood from Howard’s lips and makes it his, takes Maria’s stars and swallows them whole.

When is a god not a god? When you make it bleed.

And Tony did.  
  



End file.
